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[glock20]

I'm starting a new tt job, and suddenly am faced with the prospect of having funding to attend conferences. w00t, eh? Well, up until now I have attended a mere handful of conferences fairly regularly, and am now out of touch.

There are a lot of conferences out there, but how do you find the GOOD ones that will be good for your career, good discussion, etc? Or is there such a thing?

If it helps, I'm thinking in an interdisciplinary field:

anthropology (I already attend AAA)
women's studies
islam
education
qualitative research/ethnography

Any ideas would help.

[dept_geek]

Some general advice....

1) Start with your professional organization(s). What do they sponsor? What do their subgroups sponsor?

2) Look at your dissertation again (sorry. I know.) Skip all the text, and go right to your biblio. Any conference papers cited there? You found the work good once, maybe it is still good.  **Discipline Specific! Some folk can use conf papers in their dissertations, some can not. Use with care. **

3) Find some of the "big names" in your field. Where do they send their grad students? Those will probably be pretty good too.

That should get you passed year one. :-)

[msparticularity]

I'm starting a new tt job, and suddenly am faced with the prospect of having funding to attend conferences. w00t, eh? Well, up until now I have attended a mere handful of conferences fairly regularly, and am now out of touch.

There are a lot of conferences out there, but how do you find the GOOD ones that will be good for your career, good discussion, etc? Or is there such a thing?

If it helps, I'm thinking in an interdisciplinary field:

anthropology (I already attend AAA)
women's studies
islam
education
qualitative research/ethnography

Any ideas would help.

You might like AERA (American Educational Research Association), especially given the focus on interdisciplinary research for the 2009 conference, which is in San Diego in April. www.aera.net

[tee_bee]

You're on the TT? Where do the folks in your new department go? Did they tell you what conferences they go to, and expect you to go to?

I'd ask them, then go to those meetings, and make darn sure you let everyone and his/her mother/father know you went. I'm in sort of an interdisciplinary field, and pre-tenure I went to some real snoozers because other colleagues went too.

Even if you're in a disciplinary department, what is your discipline's most important conference (of there's just one)? For example, I am a political scientist in a public administration department, so I go to the Amer Pol Sci Assn meeting, but also the Pub Admin and Pub Policy (my real love) meetings.

If you're in an interdisciplinary, asking what conferences to go to is one of many questions you should be asking, including Where should I publish? What conferences should I go to? Do journals or books count more or less? etc. Good luck!

I'm starting a new tt job, and suddenly am faced with the prospect of having funding to attend conferences. w00t, eh? Well, up until now I have attended a mere handful of conferences fairly regularly, and am now out of touch.

There are a lot of conferences out there, but how do you find the GOOD ones that will be good for your career, good discussion, etc? Or is there such a thing?

If it helps, I'm thinking in an interdisciplinary field:

anthropology (I already attend AAA)
women's studies
islam
education
qualitative research/ethnography

Any ideas would help.

[helpful]

For qualitative research, check out these ones

http://www.icqi.org/

http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/iiqm/Conferences.cfm

http://www.cedarville.edu/academics/education/eqre/

I know the first two are pretty good.  The first one is very 'edgy'. Don't know much about the third one.